Professional Bio
Raymond Blind, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
The Blind Lab is affiliated with the Vanderbilt Center for Structural Biology, the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology and the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. The lab explores second messenger signaling in the nucleus. Specifically, they seek to understand the structure, function and signaling properties of nuclear inositide lipids and inositol phosphates, asking how these molecules directly participate in controlling gene expression.
The Blind Lab uses functional genomics, structural biology and chemical genetics to query how these second messengers operate. They then attempt to apply that information to develop drug discovery platforms, with potential to treat cancer and metabolic diseases. Nuclear inositide signaling is particularly interesting because the nucleus contains unique pools of lipids that do not exist in any membrane structure, but are instead complexed with soluble proteins.
The Blind Lab discovered certain pools of nuclear inositides can be directly remodeled by lipid signaling enzymes, with remarkable kinetic properties, providing a new framework to explain how nuclear second messenger signaling works.
Current research in the lab is focused on determining what role phosphorylated inositols, phosphoinositide lipids and their signaling enzymes play in chromatin biology, determining how nuclear phosphoinositide complexes are structured, identifying rapid nuclear signaling events using chemical genetics, and understanding how nuclear receptors acquire phospholipid ligands from membranes.
Relevant Links
Publications
Education
PhD - Philosophy - New York University, 2005
Fellowship - Pharmaceutical Chemistry - University of California, San Francisco, 2006
EdD - Cell & Molecular Pharmacology - University of California, San Francisco, 2015
Contact
Email
Kimryn.Rathmell@Vumc.Org
Address
777 Preston Research Building
2220 Pierce Ave
Nashville, TN 37232-6307